To begin, on September 11, 2001 around 8:45am a terrorist attack against America would change all American’s life’s forever. Prior to this time 19 Militants from a known terrorist group named al- Qaeda hijacked four American Airline’s Boeing 767 airplanes. One plane landed in a field in Pennsylvania and another crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The other two planes, both of which would affect the lives of American’s forever, crashed into the North tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:45 am and the other following it 18 minutes later crashed into the south tower. Osama Bin Laden is known to be the leader of these suicide terrorists and planned this attack out according so that they picked the biggest planes that they could get on (Boeing 767) that were loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel which as we all know would cause a huge explosion once striking the towers. Once the first plane hit, it struck the 80th floor of the 110-story building instantly killing hundreds of workers, meanwhile trapping hundreds of more workers in the levels above. As stated, 18 minutes after this plane struck the North tower, next came another Boeing 767 that crashed into the 60th floor of the South Tower. Thus, causing a massive explosion, instantly killings hundreds, and blowing debris all over New York City. And at this moment that’s when America knew, they were under attack. On this day a total of six people that were in the World Trade Center during the collapse survived. Another 10,000 people were rushed to the hospital and were treated for anything from minor cuts and bruises to severe injuries. Out of all four plane incidents, a total of 2, 996 people were killed including the 19 hijackers. 2,763 were killed from the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, 189 people at the Pentagon crash, and 44 people died from the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Following these attacks, the US military became aware that Osama Bin Laden was the leader behind these attacks and we sought out to find and kill him for what he has done. He was not found until 2011 where a special group of US special forces found him and killed him in a bunker in Pakistan. After this, Barrack Obama pulled a mass number of troops out of Afghanistan.
Secondly, according to an author named Igor Primoratz, in his book Terrorism: A Philosophical Investigation, he states that his definition for a terrorist act is the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people with the aim of intimidating them, or other people, into a course of. Thus, when asked if the 9/11 attacks are considered terrorism, there is no other answer than yes, it is. I can say this with 100% confidence because the attacks were aimed at the World Trade Center which is the center of the US military. Within those towers, were not other terrorist planning operations against innocent people, but they were innocent workers helping to protect our country that we fight every day to keep free. These people that were injured and killed were innocent. They were just going to work like any other day never expecting something like this. Osama Bin Laden planned this out this way to open America’s eyes that he was coming for the US and was retaliating. He planned these attacks to hurt our government and while doing so, he killed thousands of innocent people’s family members who worked hard every day to provide for themselves and their families. In Igor’s definition he clearly states that terrorism is the deliberate use of violence against innocent people with the aim of intimidating them or other people. And that is exactly what those 19 hijackers did that day. Sent from Saudi Arabia in order to intimidate and upset America’s government and people into fear of his power. After this attack it would change everyone’s life’s forever. Once this happened, we had to up the security at not only our borders but had to up security at airports just so that this incident will never happen again. Too many people were lost on this day and sadly it was at the control of one of the biggest known terrorists to walk the earth. Innocent people should always be accounted for when making plans of attack against another country, state, and city. The American government (almost) always takes this into consideration when planning on attacking a foreign country. So as stated above, the answer is pretty clear when asked if this was a terrorist attack and not just a normal government attack. This attack was on a whole other level than any other terrorist attack in history. This attack was very planned out
Third off, when doing a moral evaluation of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States World Trade Center, I can firmly say that this attack was immoral. Under the definition of consequentialism, it is the morally right act that will produce a good outcome or consequence. In a weird way this can actually explain the morality behind Osama’s plan to attack the World Trade Center. He planned this attack to result in the flustering of our government and military. In his mind he thought that doing this attack would devastate us, but instead it actually just fueled the fire and made us want to find and kill Osama even more since we couldn’t find him in the past. Based on the definition of consequentialism, in Osama’s mind this was a morally right act and from his point of view it caused a good outcome, a.k.a. thousands injured and killed which is exactly what he wanted. What many people don’t know is that Osama actually planned out the fourth plane to depart just before the planes hitting and it too would aim (although it is not 100% confirmed) for the white house or some other government building to weaken us even more. There really is no justification for Osama’s actions and any other point of view will see that his actions were not morally justifiable and that only in Osama’s viewpoint it was morally justified. So, to answer that question it would go both ways as to whether or not this attack was morally justified by consequalialist lines.
To conclude, Igor Primoratz wrote this book to really get people thinking about terrorism and to see that there are other viewpoints in this other than terrorism is bad and is meant to cause harm to innocent people, etc. In this book you can really see that Igor gives you multiple cases where maybe the terrorist act is justifiable by morals and that the so called “terrorists” act really isn’t considered a terrorist act rather just an attack amongst a group of people. His definition for terrorism is very clear and really must involve the hurting of innocent people to cause harm to and to intimidate them or to intimidate others. I believe that this book is a great read and that everyone should take the time to really understand what Igor’s message is and to get you out of that ‘tunnel vision’ type of thinking. Based on his definition, the attacks that happened on that day in September 2001 will never be forgotten and most certainly was an act of terrorism.